


small contours

by verulams (finnlogan)



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Gym Sex, Gyms, M/M, Multi, OT3, Romance, Threesome - M/M/M, and then should hopefully be wholesome by the end, its starts out very testosterone-y, the wholesome masculinity is hopefully equal with the ridiculous testosterone levels
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-10
Updated: 2020-04-14
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:01:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,239
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23095264
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/finnlogan/pseuds/verulams
Summary: Steve wants Bucky to bring him to the gym, onlypartlybecause he knows its a good opportunity to get fit. It's also partly because watching Bucky work out? That sure did work for Steve.And then there's Tony, who Bucky's been "feuding" with for the past 3 months. God forbid, Steve's attracted to them both, and-Well. Things getsweaty.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers/Tony Stark
Comments: 9
Kudos: 53





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hi my name is Finley and I am compromised by Buff Boys

(This is how it starts.)

“Let me come to the gym with you,” and the proof of how apparently unreasonable he’s being is written in the fact that Bucky doesn’t bother to respond. “C’mon, Buck, you _gotta_ teach me!”

“No,” Bucky says, flatly. This is not the first time they’ve had this conversation.

“Buck,” Steve says, again. No response. Maybe if he said Bucky’s name enough he’d get the picture. “ _Buck.”_

“Absolutely not,” he says, not even looking up from his kindle.

“... I’ll go anyway, you know. And you go every day. I’ll see you in there,” He tries. “And I’ll follow you around-”

Bucky sighs, and a sudden image shoots through his brain, of Bucky reading a newspaper and then slamming it onto his face in exasperation. Bucky’s reading from a kindle, though, so instead of that he just places it down onto the coffee table and stares at Steve.

“Why?” he asks, deadpan. 

Steve stretches, from his fingers to his arms, from his back to his feet. He’d gotten fit enough, doing the bodyweight exercises he’d been taught. Puberty had been kind to him. Like, really, really kind, and now he was _bigger_ , it was starting to look a bit, uh. _Odd_ that he wasn’t _big_. Not that there was anything wrong with being slim, he reasons. Just that Steve-

Fuck it, it was all bullshit, and Steve wanted to go to the gym with Bucky because he wanted to watch Bucky get sweaty and he wanted Bucky to teach him stuff. Not like, exclusively. That wasn’t the whole reason. Not, obviously, in so many words, but Steve has been thinking about this a _while._ He didn’t want to just turn up at the gym, not at _Bucky’s_ gym, at least. Couldn’t suddenly be in Bucky’s space. Weirdly, he had no problem staring blankly at Bucky when he played football, but- Something about being _on_ Bucky’s turf, rather than looking in from the sidelines, felt a little…

Steve doesn’t quite know what it felt like, which was why he was so desperate to get Bucky’s permission. 

Partly Steve wanted to get fit. Partly he wanted to watch _Bucky_ get fit. It was a complicated emotion, really, so when Bucky prods him from where they’re sitting across from each other on the couch, he puzzles over what to say.

“Well,” Steve says, carefully. “It’s-” he coughs. “Private.”

Bucky raises an eyebrow and tilts his head, just a little incredulous. “Private,” he repeats. 

Steve doubles down. “Yeah.”

Suddenly, Bucky’s face splits into a wide smile. “Ah, yeah, I get it,” he says, picking up the kindle and fiddling with it. “You- you just want to like- what’s the word…? _Ogle_ people. You just want to find yourself a new _gym-bunny girlfriend-_ ”

Steve snorts. Not quite what he had in mind. “...Sure.”

“Hey,” Bucky says, animated. He gestures with broad hands. “How _is_ the, uh, love situation going right now anyway?”

Steve squints at him, relaxing back into the couch, and glancing at the TV screen. “It’s not. Going, I mean. And you know you’d be the _first_ to hear-”

Bucky blinks back. “What, before Sam?”

Steve groans, exasperated. “I don’t know how many times we’re gonna be able to go over the, ‘yes Bucky, you’re my best friend and room-mate,’ before it gets _stale_ , bud!”

“Oh,” He says, grinning widely. “We’ve got a few more times to go before it gets boring, right?”

Side-eyeing him, Steve angles his body toward the TV. “ _Maybe._ Don’t push your luck.”

“Or?” Toothy smile, god, Steve hates how his eyes look soft and his mouth looks _sharp-_

 _“Or,_ ” Steve grinds out. “I’ll kick you out and install Sam as my new best friend-”

Bucky sniggers. “You’ll forcibly evict me? I’d like to see you try.” Then he blinks. “Oh, is this why you need to come to the gym? You need my help, in order to forcibly evict me?”

“No,” Steve shoves a foot in his direction, hitched up from where he’d had them crossed at the ankle. “I need your help in order to get you to _compliantly_ move out, in order for Sam to move in and be my new best friend-”

Bucky cackles. “C’mon Steve, you know me, I’m hurt that you’d consider my compliance a possibility!” His teeth look very, very sharp.

God damn it.

Steve clenches his jaw. “Seriously though, bring me to the gym,”

Bucky seems to catch onto the change of tone. He bites at the inside of his mouth, visibly mulling it over, and then shrugs. “Sure,”  
  
If Steve were a dog, his ears would prick up and his tail would start wagging. He chastises himself. Fuckin’ _smitten,_ Steve, Nat was _right._ Nat was always right, but it _always_ hurt. “Really?” he asks.

Squinting at him, Bucky runs his tongue over his front teeth. “Sure,” he repeats. “Why not? What’s the worst that can happen?”

***

Stepping through the weird, space-pod doors to the gym is- well. Terrifying. As they walk up towards them, Steve’s struck with weird terror that he’d get stuck, somehow, trapped forever in limbo between the-outside-world and the-gym, but-

Bucky claps him on the shoulder. “Try not to look too nervous, Steve,” he says, and when Steve shoots him a sheepish smile he grins like a flashbulb. “It’ll be fun!”

Steve squints as Bucky demonstrates the lock, tiny space-age buttons lit up in blue. “I thought you weren’t looking forward to this?”

Bucky makes a face. “I wasn’t, and now I am. Things change,” he says, stepping into the weird pod. The door closes behind him, and he waves at Steve through the glass and laughs when Steve gapes at him.

“How am I supposed to-”

“The _code_ I sent you!” Bucky calls, muffled. The door on the other side opens and Bucky steps through into the gym. Through the glass, he can see rows and rows of cardio equipment. There are rowing machines, ellipticals, treadmills, and some other things that look a little more like torture devices than exercise equipment. Still, none of that changes the fact that he’s fumbling with his phone and he _can’t_ find the code.

Digging through his photos in the hopes he’d taken a screenshot, he resets the wifi as many times as he can before he gets frustrated, and then stares through the glass to see Bucky with his back turned, staring at some vending machines. 

“Oh _great,_ ” he growls, glaring at the pin pad.

“Hey,” comes a voice. Steve startles, jumping about a foot out of his skin. “ _Woah_ there, unintended consequences, are you-? You good?”

Steve wheels around and has to-

He looks downwards, just a fraction shorter than he’d assumed a guy with a voice like that would be.

He’s got dark hair, dark eyes and a beardy thing that looks well-groomed and _complicated_ to style, and he’s- buff. Not _ripped,_ he doesn’t think, not that he can tell through the guy’s loose top, but his _arms._ His arms were _big._ Steve closes his mouth with an audible snap. He also has a really sharp smile.

“Mm-hmm,” the guy says. He laughs, a little, through his nose, smiling widely and showing off bright white teeth. “So, hey, I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt, strong and silent, would you like me to try that again? I’m Tony, by the way, I’d say it was nice to meet you but I actually can’t make that assessment yet.”

“I-” Steve starts, then snaps to attention. “Hi, uh, sorry, I’m Steve,” he says, a little sheepishly, before straightening his shoulders again. He clears his throat. “My buddy’s in there already, I’m just looking for my code. You can go through if you…?” He gestures to let Tony past him, to let him get through the doors and then maybe Steve would stop staring at his arms and his jaw and his-

He clears his throat again as Tony smiles. “Yeah, the wifi in here is _ass,_ isn’t it?” Tony makes absolutely no move to go through the doors, and swings the bag he’d been holding beside him over his shoulder. “I did tell them, I even told them I’d help them fix it if it was, like, a hardware issue, but no,” he gestures with his free hand, “‘ _Never_ listen to Tony,’ they said. I have no idea why everyone’s so convinced I’m incompetent. Oh!” His eyes light up, suddenly, and he drops the bag to the ground with a thump. 

It sounds heavy. Fuck.

Tony raises an eyebrow at him as he once again has to forcibly shut his mouth from where it had dropped open. “Okay big guy, how about this…?” he grabs his phone from his pocket. It’s like a sheet of glass. “ _How_ about we hotspot you? I have data for _days,_ so.”

“Uh,” Steve says. “Sure? I don’t-” he glances through to the gym, but Bucky’s talking to- Natasha. God damn it, why weren’t they turning around? He blinks. Not, of course, that he was complaining, not really. Making, uh… _friends._ Gym buddies, that was important. Or something. “But, uh, yeah. If you could, Tony, that’d be really helpful.”

Tony looks up at him, smiling slightly from over the light blue glow of his phone. He pushes his hair back with one hand and taps with the thumbs of the other, some long complicated password that Steve probably couldn’t remember at gunpoint. “My, uh. Actually wait, I gotta change the name…” He mumbles, grabbing at the phone with two hands now, fingers flitting faster than Steve thinks fingers should be able to. “Hm, that’s- yeah, that’s a bit less likely to get me arrested for public indecency, I think! Here we go, it should be showing up now.”

Steve grins at him. “Thanks, Tony, I really appreciate it- Are you…?” Steve frowns as the list refreshes. “Ah,” he mumbles, smiling, and then catches Tony’s eyes. “You’re TonyStark42069nice, aren’t you?”

Tony smiles a very wide smile. “Sure. Always good to establish these things when you meet someone, I think. It’s like- It’s like, you know those poisonous toads that if you lick them you get really high? You know the really brightly coloured ones? It’s like that. Like, uh…” He gestures, leaning forward and grabbing his bag from the floor.

Jesus fucking christ, the man was a _triangle._

“Like, you know, how they make acid tabs, or, or-” he gestures again. “You know, right?” He smiles widely when Steve gives him an incredulous, slightly giddy, grin. “Anyway, sport, let’s get you in,”

He ushers Steve towards the door, leaning back on his hips. Steve punches in his code, and steps through the door.

Tony waves at him as the doors close and Steve smiles back. Jesus, smitten was the wrong word, but god _damn_ , he was pretty. And buff. And a triangle. 

When he steps through the doors to the gym, there’s Bucky and Nat, and-

“Hey, Buck!” Steve announces his presence, brightly. “Hey, Nat, it’s been a while. What’s-” They both turn around, smiling, and then-

Bucky’s vision _zooms_ in on a point behind Steve, and he watches something happen.

“Uh,” Bucky mumbles. There’s a hint of a frown on his face.

“You okay?” Steve says, immediately, glancing at Natasha, who has a sly smirk all over her face. Steve frowns. “You okay, Buck?” he repeats, turning around, only to be met with Tony, who was stepping through the doors just behind them and grinning.

“Hi,” Tony says, as he passes, light, nonchalant. Bucky’s _thoroughly_ unimpressed, it’s plain on his face.

When Bucky only gives him a very tight smile in response, and Tony smiles wider, twiddling his fingers in a wave at them all, Steve comes to the realisation that something was quite clearly _going on._

(Tony really was a triangle, short enough and _built_ enough to give that impression easily. He looks... effortless.)

When he finds his way to a rowing machine on the other side of the room, Steve is aware of quite a few things at once. Firstly, he’d been staring at Tony. He knows because Nat has her eyebrows raised. Secondly, Bucky had _also_ been staring at Tony, and he’s frowning, jaw tight. Steve knows _that_ because Bucky is _still_ staring at Tony. 

“Oh, god,” Nat sighs out. She grasps at her face with her hand and sighs. “You are both _so_ stupid.”

There’s a twinge of something in his belly as he whips his head around to face her. Bucky, he’s pleased to note, does exactly the same thing. They’re glaring at her, and she just sighs again.

“What?” Steve demands.

At the same moment, Bucky asks, “What have we done _now?_ ”

“Nothing,” she says. “ _Yet.”_ She flicks Bucky on the shoulder, before walking off towards the running machines. “ _Try_ not to make fools of yourselves, okay?” she calls, deadpan over her shoulder.

Peering back at each other, Bucky shrugs, and Steve shakes his head. “What, uh… what was that about?”

“What?” Bucky squints at him, shoving his fingers into his pocket. “What was what about?” 

Steve bites back a fairly conflicted smile. “The thing with Tony-?”

“With- with _Tony?_ ” He repeats, his eyes wide and his eyebrows high. “You- how do you know him?”

“Oh,” Steve shrugs, feeling something like worry blossom in his stomach. If there was something going _on_ between them both, and Steve-

Well, and Steve was attracted to them _both-_

He clears his throat after a moment. “I don’t know him. Not really, he just hotspotted me so I could get in. Told me the wifi was terrible,” he says, glancing over his shoulder at Tony on the rowing machine. 

“Oh,” groans Bucky, shoving his hands into his face. “That’s so _like_ him.”

Blinking, Steve feels a smile curl on his lips as he realises that there was like, _definitely_ something going on here, but that it was very unlikely to be a sex thing. “What?”

“You know he brings that huge heavy bag like, everywhere?” Bucky says, exasperated and frowning. “He carries that thing around like it’s his emotional support gym bag, man, it’s _so_ annoying.”

“...What?” Steve laughs.

“He started coming in here a few months ago and he takes _mirror_ selfies.” Bucky’s mouth is all twisted up at the side and he looks _mad,_ some remembered slight that seems like it didn’t in the first place clouding up his face. “ _Mirror selfies,_ Steve.”

Steve sniggers, “So? Don’t you do that, too?”

Bucky glares at him. “Well, yeah. Not when I’m actually in the gym, though. And,” he continues, grabbing Steve by the arm and walking him towards the lockers. “And-”

He frowns, suddenly, and Steve stares with a grin on his face, like he’s watching a firework show. Or a sitcom. Some kind of show, anyway, and Bucky is gesturing wildly, apparently lost for words. Eventually, he just grabs at Steve’s forearms and sighs. “Look, Steve, we- we hate each other. Guy’s an asshole.”

Steve blinks. “You- he hates you? He waved at you!”

“It was a hate-wave,” he says, sourly, dumping his keys and his hat into the locker, and tying his hair up into a bun on the top of his head. Steve thinks suddenly that hate-wave sounds kind of like a genre of music that Bucky would _definitely_ listen to.

“It was _not_ a hate-wave. Hey, though, can I put my keys…?” Steve asks, laughing. Bucky nods, still sour as he fiddles with his socks. “Seriously though, why do you think he hates you?” Steve shoves his keys into the locker and locks it, glancing down at Bucky, where he’s _still_ pulling his socks up over his sweats.

Bucky’s mouth curls over even _further._ “Can’t explain it.” 

“Can’t?” Steve asks, grinning. “Or won’t?”

“The first one,” Bucky spits, scowling. He stands up, and crosses his arms. “Seriously, I thought you were here to work out, not to pry into my feud.”

“Your _feud?_ ” Steve repeats, blinking. 

“...yeah, shut up. Come on, let’s get going.” He mutters, grabbing at Steve’s arm, and pulling him over towards the running machines. Nat’s not there anymore, and Tony’s still on the rowing machines a couple of rows over. And Bucky’s right, he _does_ have that bag with him. 

Steve gets onto the machine, and watches as Bucky stands next to him, fiddling with buttons. The incline goes up, and the little clip goes onto his tee (so that it’ll stop if he falls, Bucky explains) and-

“Uh, Buck?” he says, as the machine slowly starts.

“Mmm?” Bucky says, sounding politely interested. “What?”

“That seems a little fast,” and sure enough, the machine speeds up and speeds up, and then speeds up again, and Steve can keep pace but only just and-

“Two minutes doing this, one minute walking.”

Steve is suddenly very busy running to do anything but nod at him. 

Bucky grins, waves, and steps onto the machine next to him.

“It’ll do it automatically,” he reassures, but it isn’t really very reassuring, because although Steve knows he can _definitely_ run/sprint for two minutes straight, he wasn’t entirely sure he could do it on a _machine._

Bucky starts running too, and the music in the gym floods over the room, punctuated by footfalls and gasps, the brass-tinny tone of people dropping weights to the ground.

(...That's how it starts, Steve says, face flushed bright red. That's how it starts.)


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They see Tony again, which is not a surprise because he _also_ lived in the gym. 
> 
> So there's Tony, and then there's Bucky, and Steve is starting to think they've got _history._

Several months later, Bucky is heaving breaths, and he pokes at Steve. It’s not a _light_ poke either, not a gentle one, and it twinges as Steve rubs the muscle of it and complains.

“Listen, Buck, if you hadn’t wanted to row for that long, you should’ve _said,_ ” he mutters. Steve, as it turns out, is _good_ at cardio. All those years of heart palpitations and asthma, building right up to this moment where he’s not more _muscular_ than Bucky, but he’s certainly _fitter._

Bucky liked free weights, machine weights, _body weights_. He didn’t like much else, as it turned out.

Steve liked most things in the gym. There was something satisfying about being able to use every different kind of cardio machine in a session, and there was something even _more_ satisfying in knowing that he could outrun Bucky, even if he couldn’t out _lift_ him.

“Free weights?” Bucky asks, still panting. He’s sweaty and pushing his hair out of his face. It’d escaped his ponytail somehow, now stuck to his forehead with sweat. Steve, dimly, notices that when he pushes strands of hair away from his eyes, it makes his hands look huge.

Steve is only breathing a little heavy. “Sure. You don’t wanna…?”

“I don’t want to what?” Bucky says, standing up from where they’re sat against the wall. Steve grins at him and pulls himself to his feet.

“Don’t need a few more moments to recover?”

“Shut up,” Bucky says, shaking his head. “I’m fine, I’m just, uh…” He trails off, scowling, and when Steve follows his gaze it lands on Tony.

Tony was always in the gym, though he was usually in classes. Today is no different, and he’s walking out of the enclosed functional area with a black towel pulled tight across his shoulders. He spots them almost immediately, and he smiles widely, waving at them.

Bucky groans and Steve swats at him. “Stop it,” he mutters, under his breath.

Bucky puts a hand up to his face to hide his smile. “Stop what?”

Tony, too, is covered in sweat, palms wide and fingers blunt as he pushes his hair out of his face.

Steve is struck, oddly, by the fact they both had longer hair than Steve did. Both of them, the, uh. The- The people. The- people that he, uh. Them.

He stumbles internally, tripping over phrases as Tony starts walking over, and he looks from Bucky to the approaching figure of Tony in alarm.

“Steve?”

“Hm?” He mumbles, taking a deep breath and trying to compose himself.

“You okay, bud?” Bucky says, turning towards him and putting an arm on his shoulder.

“Mm,” he says, then coughs. “Ah, yeah, yeah, I’m alright. Just, uh. Thinkin’.”

“That’s dangerous,” Bucky mutters, then laughs.

“What’s dangerous?” Tony finally reaches the end of the gym and grins at them, significantly shorter than either of them but no less confident because of it, apparently. “Hello, boys,” he says, brightly, then frowns. “What’s dangerous? Don’t say Natasha, because yeah, she kicked my ass in the boxing class this week-”

Steve stifles a laugh, shot forward into the present. “Natasha’s like that, huh,” he says. “Anyway, Buck was just saying that thinking was dangerous.” He pauses and shoots a deliberate glance at Bucky. ”Apparently.”

Tony bites at the insides of his cheeks, smiling widely. He dumps his heavy duffel bag on the floor next to them. Something about that smile looks- sly. Sly? He corrects himself because that wasn’t the right word, but he’ll be damned if he knows what the right one is. “There’s a joke to be made, right now, about how none of us is good at thinking and that’s why we’re in the gym, right?” He laughs, then sours. “Gym rats, or something. Don’t- don’t quote me on that, I’m very tired, Nat beat me up yesterday and I’ve just had the _least fun_ core workout ever and I haven’t slept in _some_ hours, but-” He brightens again, immediately. “Hey, though, you wanna see my damn _abs?_ I have never looked so-”

“No, thank you, Tony,” says Bucky, gritting his teeth. Tony cuts off and changes track, clearly trying for flirty.

“Aw, come on Bucky, you liked ‘em before-”

What?

Bucky splutters and his face burns a bright red.

_What?_

Steve raises his eyebrows. “Uh?” He questions, staring at Bucky then at Tony then back again, and god damn Tony looks like he’s _relishing_ this. “Before?” Steve repeats.

And briefly, Bucky looks panic-stricken and terrified, and Tony laughs softly. “Hey, don’t worry. If it’s not a thing we’re talking about, then, I guess that’s just how it is. ‘Sides,” Tony looks over at Steve. “Steve’s a big boy, right?”

He pauses, looks at Steve harder. The force of it seems to burn in Steve’s gut. “Actually, Steve’s a _very_ big boy, now. How are you _doing_ , Mr Muscle, nice to meet you, if you’re interested in boxing? _I’m your guy,_ and you’ll beat me up probably and we will _not_ talk about how hot that is-”

Bucky’s face returns to a vaguely normal colour, but Steve feels the itch of the unanswered question in his stomach.

Steve laughs, easily. Maybe better to let the question sit, for now. Let nobody tell him he was ‘stubborn’ or whatever, even though he was definitely gonna ask Bucky later. “Boxing’s not my thing, Tony,”

Tony laughs back and gasps, scandalised. “How _dare_ you, I’ll have you know I’m a champ and I could convert you if I wanted-” He laughs and flicks his wrist. “Jokes aside, though, you seemed like you were a cardio guy?”

Bucky’s face, now completely back to normal, turns towards him. Steve was aware enough about body language to know it's something about interest and openness, and probably he was just genuinely curious. “Yeah, Steve,” he prompts. “I thought you were here to get ripped?”

And ain’t that an attack. He’d joined the gym for- a few reasons, but… getting strong was meant to be one of them. He was definitely more toned, if that counted for anything. He quickly glances at Bucky’s legs and Tony’s arms.

...Did _not_ count for anything, then. Huh.

“Yeah,” he says, slowly. “I just- I wanted to, uh. You know. Routine, whatever,” he says, gesturing widely, and feeling something cringe in him. It wasn’t that- it wasn’t that they were _judging_ him, but... Something about being such a small kid, something about hitting puberty and being essentially a beanpole, something about him being… smaller. It didn’t sit well with him, not anymore. Didn’t- wasn’t- didn’t feel like that’s what he should _look_ like.

Tony’s eyes are soft again. “Hey, if you don’t wanna box, there are classes- we could do one of the, uh,” he gestures with his arms, pulling them taught and then up over his head, flexing. “The, you know, what are they called?” He squints. “You know what they’re called, c’mon, have hands on the end.”

Bucky blinks. “...Arms?”

“Yeah!” Tony claps and grins a billion-dollar smile. “You’re so on it, Barnes, knew you were with it. Anyway, we could do an _arms_ class. Like a, a, a functional class where you really _pump_ it.”

He accentuates the ‘P’s, popping his lips, and then leaves his mouth open, and _hell,_ Steve is not equipped for this guy _and_ Bucky, and he is definitely not equipped for them now that he’s fairly sure they’ve got-

“Tony,” Bucky growls, warningly.

History, Steve finishes the thought. He’s fairly sure they’ve got history.

“What? You could come!” Tony suddenly seems _delighted_ at the thought. “You could totally come, actually, both of you should. We got Mr Muscle and- and-” He coughs. “Bucky Barnes,” he finishes, slowly.

“Not on top form?” Bucky asks. It’s meant to be snide, Steve reckons, but it comes out… softer.

Tony seems to falter. “Well, I, uh.” He coughs and then visibly composes himself. That seemed to happen a lot around Tony. “Not quite. I did mention I just had the abs class, right? _No es bueno_ ,” He says. “Definitely I am _hurting._ We’re _strained,_ boys, I’ve got abdominal-muscle-strain enough to last me for a lifetime, and I have to meet Pepper for a meeting about the entrepreneur fund on campus, and- Oh, _shit._ ”

He looks at his wrists, then up at Steve and Bucky, then down at his wrist again.

“Well,” he says, brightly, a grin spread across his face. Cheeky, Steve thinks. “I’m late! Extremely late. I was meant to rush straight there, and I, uh, just did not do that! That’s good, isn’t it? Like at least some percentage good. A percentage, anyway. Anyway, anyway,” He says, quickly, grabbing at the bag straps and hauling it over his shoulder. “Enjoy your weights! Gotta rush. Pep’s gonna _kill_ me. Ciao!”

And then, just like that, he’s gone.

...huh.

They glance at each other, and then they go on as normal.

Maybe Steve checks his phone, looks for the boxing classes on the app. Maybe he does more work on the free weights than usual. Maybe he does that because that’s what Bucky wanted, maybe he does it because Tony had said he should.

Maybe it’s a coincidence and he does it for no reason at all, but either way, Steve books a class and lets Bucky tell him what to do as steps up to the barbell.

He doesn’t ask about their history, doesn’t ask about whatever Bucky-and-Tony thing had happened in the past, how the _hell_ they knew each other. He doesn’t mention it at all, but it burns in his gut and it feels-

Difficult, for reasons he can’t explain. There was Bucky, his best friend since forever. Steve was self-aware enough to know that there was something unresolved, something about the way they looked too long at each other, something about the way they did everything together, something about the way Steve stared when Bucky pulled weights up from the ground and sweat poured down from his temples.

There was also something in the way they pressed their legs against one another when they sat together on their shitty couch, the one they’d gotten from a garage sale and the one that Bucky’d had to move all by himself, because Steve, even at 19, hadn’t been finished with puberty yet. He’d been very happy to stare at Bucky then, too, but- there was something about the way they pressed their legs against one another. That was the crux. The point, really, was that often watching Bucky sweat was hot. Watching Bucky… he stumbles over the right word. Supine? Vulnerable? Inactive? Anyway, there was something about watching Bucky at rest that was _different._ In a way that he couldn’t, and most definitely _wouldn’t,_ explain.

And then there was Tony. Tony with a billion-kilowatt smile. Bucky was different to Tony, they occupied such separate spaces and yet such similar ones that it almost made Steve startle every time he thought about it.

Tony was smaller than Bucky. Mouthier, somehow, than Bucky, which was saying something. Tony was, uh, with full respect to Steve’s best friend, _cleaner_ than Bucky. He was all tight lines forced into motion. Tony looked like a- like a man who knew how to work a room, who’d been trained to know exactly who he was and who he wanted to be.

Bucky was soft lines schooled into a suit. Not that he ever wore suits, really, but there was something about Bucky that said he was designed for places-other-than-here, that he was built for another world where he’d- do something else, Steve finishes, slowly. Bucky could’ve even been like a farmer or something. It was like the modern world didn’t _fit,_ not because he couldn’t function in it, but because he was _meant_ for something _different._

Tony, conversely? Tony looked like he’d fit _anywhere._ A chameleon, a _tiger_ in a suit and sunglasses. Something about it is refreshing. Tony looked like he lived _right now._ Like he had to, almost, like something was forcing him to be this way. Like it was some kind of grip on the present he couldn’t shake. Tony, as he’d found out recently, was an engineer- or studied engineering, anyway. He was working through his master’s degree as Bucky and Steve were still undergrads and something about the way he was so-

Not ‘mechanical’, Steve amends, before he even thinks about it, though the Tony he knew seemed simple enough of a nut to crack. Mechanical was the wrong word. He was all bark and no bite, a combination of brain and brawn. Though the brawn, Steve guesses, you wouldn’t be able to see through the suits that he supposes Tony would wear. It was _weird._ There was no reason for them to know each other. But for some reason, Tony knew Pepper, who knew Nat, and Tony also knew _Bucky,_ somehow, which is just-

They were at once too similar and so alien to each other that it rankled something in Steve’s brain. Sharp tongue. Sharp minds, in different ways. Tony’s brain fit into contours of engineering, science, design, and Bucky’s instead fit into analytics, to managing and exploring and understanding, deeply. Steve has no idea where he fits into _that_ scheme of things. Maybe he was the gradient between the two. Maybe he was somewhere else entirely, a different palette. They were both neon and he was pastel.

… or something. The idea that Steve was _pastel_ is strange in his brain. But next to the sharp direction of Tony’s brain and the deep-seated _something_ of Bucky’s, it’s- pretty hard to think of him as anything else.

Maybe Bucky and Steve were both blues, he thinks, maybe Tony was red. Maybe Tony had his _own_ colour palette, the golds of Pepper and the silvers of the way Steve had seen him interact with Natasha. Nat had mentioned another engineering student, Rhodes, and maybe _he_ fit into it somewhere. Maybe- Maybe they just weren’t in the same set, maybe they were contrasting and not complementary. Tony was- Tony was hot, but maybe that didn’t mean it’d word, some kind of clash instead of one of those triad palettes you could get-

Whatever. The metaphor was getting away from him, he shakes his head and exhales sharply.

“You alright?” And he’s shocked out of his train of thought completely by Bucky, who’s nudging at him with his knee. “You have been staring into space for _some_ time.”

“Oh,” Steve says, laughing. He jams a hand up to his face and scratches at his stubble.

“What were you thinking about?” Bucky asks. He seems genuinely curious, eyes soft and body curled over around his kindle.

And then it’s panic stations. Steve, for the love of all you hold dear, think about something _other_ than Tony-and-Bucky and think about something _other_ than the fact that that’s what he was thinking about-

“Might grow my beard out,” he says, eventually.

Bucky raises his eyebrows. “That’s what you were thinking about for a full 5 minutes?” He says, incredulously. “Man, that’s a really hard think for a facial hair decision.”

Steve laughs, then feels his mind wander, and speaks before he can even think. “I wonder how long it takes Tony to do his-” he catches himself. “His, ah. His beardy thing.”

Bucky’s eyebrows lift up even higher and he has a very, very small incredulous smirk nudged onto the corners of his mouth. “His beardy thing?” Bucky repeats.

“You know,” Steve sighs, and commits to the moment. Potentially _this_ was the moment he got to find out about their history. Potentially. He mimes shaving with his hand, dropping his phone to his lap. “His beardy thing.”

“ _Yes,_ Steve,” He groans. Long-suffering, somehow. “I know what you mean, it’s the _wording_ that I’m having difficulty with.”

“ _Alright,”_ Steve says, jokingly defensive. He makes a face and leans back further into the sofa. “Seriously though,” he presses. Somehow, it feels like it’s important for him to know. “Do you think it takes a long time?”

Part of the problem was that Bucky and Steve told each other- everything. Or close enough to everything. And Nat always joked that they were platonic life partners and Steve had always felt something cringe in his gut when she had, because-

Well, he hadn’t known why. He hadn’t thought it was anything important, anyway, but finding out that Bucky had been potentially _involved_ with Tony, then...

Well, Steve reasons with himself again. He’d known Bucky wasn’t straight. He had a little bisexual pride pin on his messenger bag. Nat had joked it was the only item he owned that wasn’t black, and Steve had laughed, but Bucky had never actually _done_ anything with any men.

Not so far as Steve had known anyway.

And if he had… and hadn’t told Steve? That made things more complicated.

“Tony’s beard probably takes longer every morning than it takes me to cook a meal.”

Steve, once again jolted back into the moment, rolls his eyes at him. “You only eat pasta, though, Buck. Do you remember Nat got you that one-pot-meals recipe thing for your birthday? That was on brand.”

“Hm,” Bucky says, pursing his lips and grumbling. “Fine. It takes longer for him to do his beard than it takes for me to write an essay.”

Steve reasons that that’s fair, and has to _really_ think about what he says next. A pause, where neither of them say anything. It sits like water, somehow. The pause feels like he’s waist deep in water, legs struggling against the weight of it. Bucky eyes him carefully over his kindle.

“So, uh.” The silence splits apart like a child disrupting a puddle. “You and, uh…”

“What, Steve?” Bucky says when silence falls again. The puddle coalesces back into a cold, silent, static pool. Bucky nudges him again after a few seconds. “What?”

“...you and Tony, huh?”

“Ugh!” he flops backwards, grasping the kindle to his chest. “I _knew_ you would ask. Look, I’m not- Nothing _happened._ ”

“Bucky, I…” Steve stares at him, and when Bucky doesn’t carry on, he holds their gaze together and stares. “Bucky, I’m not trying to _get at you_.”

Bucky stares at him and frowns. His face looks harshly lined, eyebrows pulled together and stubble grey-looking against his skin. And he looks set like that, for just a moment. Like for just a moment, Steve could’ve been a stranger, prying into his life.

For a moment, it feels like there’s an earthquake.

The moment passes, though, and Bucky heaves a deep breath and swallows, breaking their eye contact and then staring at the carpet. “It was at Nat’s party,” he mumbles. “A Hallowe’en thing. A while ago. Before we could get you to touch alcohol. Tony was, uh.”

Steve stays silent, waiting for Bucky to carry on. His eyes flash up, stare meaningfully at Steve for a second. Though what he’s meant to _get_ from that meaningful stare, Steve doesn’t know. Bucky was clearly-

Well. Something was going on.

Bucky flops his head back again. “You know, Tony’s actually a pretty good friend of Nat’s? They get together for coffee.”

Steve blinks. “I didn’t know that, no. Why?”

“He was there, and I didn’t know anyone other than Nat and Clint, and Clint was _so drunk,_ the man was absolutely out of his damn mind. And so I ended up sticking with Nat, who hadn’t seen Tony in a while, so…”

A silence, just a brief one. Bucky groans, deep from his gut, and Steve adjusts where he’s sat on the couch, his body aimed towards Bucky’s. “...You’re gonna think I’m dumb for this, Steve.” Bucky mumbles. It’s almost like a _warning_ rather than a throwaway comment.

“You had sex with him,” Steve blurts, because it’s the first place his brain goes, and _that’s_ odd. Odd on his tongue, odd in his brain. Sits weirdly, a cat stretched into weird angles and poised from a height so high that it couldn’t jump down from without causing some real damage. “Didn’t you?”

Bucky _shoots_ upwards, legs whipping up from the couch and nearly colliding with Steve’s head. The kindle drops to the floor. “ _No!”_ He cries. “Absolutely not. We just kissed! Made out. It was _fine_.”

“ _Oh,”_ Steve pauses, bewildered. “ _Oh!”_

Bucky gesticulates, wildly. “No no, didn’t have sex, _no._ He was wearing this fuckin’ ridiculous playboy bunny suit, he had the- the-” Bucky puts his hands up to his head and gestures, “The _bunny ears_ and everything and a _tail_ and _Steve, stop laughing-!_ ”

“I’m not!” He protests. “I’m not laughing, I swear.” But he has to bite his lips tightly, so maybe it doesn’t come across as honest as it could.

Bucky glares at him, face flushed. He doesn’t go pink the same way that Steve does, but by _god_ does the man sweat. “It was hot and I was really drunk,” he says, sourly. “And Nat was _encouraging_ , and _Tony_ was drunk, and he was just…”

“Hot?” Steve supplies, and then blinks at himself. Charismatic? Ripped? ...Sexy, attractive, _suave-_ He pauses. Not the time, Rogers, calm down.

“Oh, you have _no_ idea,” Bucky returns, before clearly composing himself, some dawning realisation hitting him. “Hey, though, you, uh.” He pushes his hair out of his face, staring at Steve. “You think he’s hot?”

Steve’s face runs _really_ warm, suddenly. “I- hm,” he stumbles. “It’s not that- that, that he’s _hot_ , I just-”

Buck cackles, flinging his hands up. “See! It’s not just me!”

“ _What?!”_ Steve says, incredulous. _“Is that what this was about?!”_ The laugh on Bucky’s face immediately clears.

“I didn’t think he _wasn’t_ hot, I just thought- you know, with us being men and all, I just- He’s very, ah, masculine?” Bucky tries. He visibly tastes the words in his mouth, tentative.

“You- you were worried he shouldn’t be hot because he was _masculine?_ ” Steve exclaims, planting his hands on the edge of the cushions and raising his eyebrows as far up his face as he can manage. “Come on Buck, talk about internalised homophobia-”

“It’s not that… it’s not that deep,” Bucky says, then seems to clock Steve’s incredulous expression and corrects himself. “Alright, maybe it _is_ that deep, but look, I’ve found guys hot before, I’m _bi,_ for god’s sake, I- just not guys other than...!” He coughs, and flushes, and then carries on, “Not _masculine_ guys, not like- not like short and stocky and, and, like _that,_ and he’s- Steve!” He rears forward, grabbing tightly onto Steve’s shoulders. “Steve, he’s _so_ confident, and he doesn’t give a shit that people know he’s polyamorous and he doesn’t even give a shit that they know he’s _bi_ -”

“Breathe, Buck,” Steve says, softly. “It’s fine to find a masculine guy hot, you know that, right?”

Bucky’s mouth twists and he settles back on his edge of the couch, releasing his grip on Steve’s arms. “Look, Steve, he’s- and _you’re_ \- and I’m just….” He stutters, false start sentences sitting in the front of his mouth so much that he visibly struggles with his tongue. Something about it sits softer in Steve than it should, feels like it settles within him. Something about the implications of those false-started words- ones that Steve doesn’t even _begin_ to understand right now- sit calm in his stomach. “Look, Steve, I just _kissed_ him, and he’s hot but I don’t, uh, I’m not- we decided…” He trails off.

“Is that what this is about?” Steve asks again. He feels it curl in his gut. “Just a kiss?”

Bucky pulls a face and flops his head backwards. “... _yeah,_ ” he mumbles, chagrined.

“Bucky…” Steve covers his face with his hands. “You pretended you had a _feud_ with a guy just because you kissed him at a party and he was too masculine to be _hot?_ ”

A short pause, where Steve bites back a laugh, and Bucky makes a faint grumbling noise in the back of his throat. He slings his legs onto Steve’s lap. “When you put it like that, it makes me sound…”

“You were right Buck, I do think you’re being dumb.”

Bucky exhales a laugh, and silence falls for a moment. Steve watches idly and tries not to stare as Bucky picks up his kindle and settles back onto the couch.

“...I’ve kissed Nat at parties, you know,” Steve says, conversationally, after a while.

_“What?”_ Bucky exclaims. “I thought she was…!” He shakes his head, quickly, and gapes. “I thought she was a lesbian?”

“Oh, she is.” Steve agrees, easily. Bucky’s face-journey was a _trip,_ he was clearly going through some emotions. “Or she knows she is, now.”

Bucky opens and closes his mouth. “You turned her _gay?_ ”

Steve swats at him. “You _know_ that’s not how any of this works. What’s with the toxicity today?”

Bucky coughs, seems to come to some conclusion, and then says, “Sorry.”

Silence falls again, more comfortable this time. Bucky’s feet prod into Steve’s thigh and he goes back to tapping at his phone which Bucky reads.

“Did you know that Nat asked me whether she should ask Pepper on a date?” Bucky asks, eyeing Steve from above his kindle.

“What-?! Why does this information always reach me _last?_ ”

Bucky sighs, tilting his kindle down so his face is more visible. “It’s because you give advice that’s too good Steve. You’re too earnest.” He pulls the kindle back up his chest, covering his face again. “Makes people uncomfortable when you’re right about shit.”

“Well,” Steve starts. “That’s not-”

“Especially,” Bucky cuts across him, not looking up from his screen. “Because you’re a huge virgin.”

“ _Hey!”_ Steve exclaims, swatting again at Bucky’s legs. “Low _blow_ Barnes, weren’t we just talking about toxicity-?”

“Alright, soyboy-”

“ _Soyboy?!”_

Bucky cackles, and it rests like that, joking and then calm and soft and softer. It sits between the skin of his fingers, it sits between the veins of his wrists. That’s how it works, how it has always been.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Taking fic requests over on my Tumblr, [ here.](https://verulamfic.tumblr.com)

**Author's Note:**

> you can find me on tumblr, [here ](https://verulams.tumblr.com)! or on twitter, [here](https://twitter.com/verulamfic)!


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